Budget Blast: Evolved Enlightenment ($12)

Welcome to Budget Blast where we show you decks that pack a punch without breaking a budget! Two energy =230 damage. Do we have your attention? This little equation is just the start of a little bit of math needed to make this deck to work to maximum potential. This is because this beefy damage is only possible through Medicham's Strike of Enlightenment:

[F][F] Strike of Enlightenment: 10+
If this Pokémon’s remaining HP is 30 or less, this attack does 160 more damage.

So if we get Medicham down in health, there's very few Pokemon that won't be taking a one hit knockout. What's a fast way to get sixty damage on a Medicham so your opponent can't catch up as you smash through them? A bunch of crazy budget trickery that's what! Enough talk, let's take a look at this wild deck!

Two cards are vital to making this work, Celebi Prism Star and Po Town. This Celebi has a very cool attack called Time Distortion that reads as follows: Devolve any number of your Benched Pokémon as many times as you like. Put each Evolution card removed this way into your hand. Po Town deals 30 damage to any Pokemon that evolves. So if you evolve, devolve, then evolve once more thanks to Time Distortion you've hit the 60 damage needed to unleash your Powerful attack! As you'll have thirty or less damage, [Hustle Belt] works perfectly to help you hit that massive 230 damage!

There's only one issue, how do you hold out long enough to start these swings? Thankfully there's Raichu BUS 41 is here to help! It can keep the opponent Paralyzed while you try and get ready for the attack. We also have to use a special Pikachu, Pikachu PR-SM SM81. The main reason is that it has 70 HP and can survive two uses of Po Town while still being a good budget option!

Now let's see some of the other cards in the deck and why we chose them. Carbink LOT 117 is a way to grab Po Town if you can't get it into your initial hand by attacking with Diamond Gate. We also include a couple of Acerola to help move things off the field if you can't use a Max Potion or to potentially Paralyze the opponent once Celebi is out of the active. Speaking of Celebi, you need a way to grab it in case it's a prized card. Gladion is perfect for this, and thankfully Carbink's Diamond Gate can also search it out!

The rest of the cards are rather standard for draw power and searching out Pokemon from the deck. The one difference is a much larger number of Timer Ball than usual as we need our evolution Pokemon faster and two coins flipped heads can really bring them out. We also choose Mars as a budget draw supporter just to add a little more disruption potentially as you set up.

Beef Up This Deck: This deck unlike many budget decks, doesn't benefit too much from adding many non budget cards. Guzma is the exception, making a much better card than Escape Rope. If combined with Cynthia over some of the other draw supporters like Tate & Liza, it could maybe be a way to beef up the deck a bit more. Other than those two cards the deck is basically the best as is, it's just a cheap deck!

Weaknesses: This deck is a bit complex and needs a lot of moving parts to function. If the opponent can set up faster than you can get ready it's game over for your deck. You also have to use two Energy attachments to attack, so decks with Crushing Hammer could be a big thorn in your side. Finally, there's bench damage decks. You'll be massively sniped before you have a chance to fight bck. If you're clever, you can try and play around this to your advantage, but it's still going to be much harder to win.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Budget Blast! By far these articles have been the most viewed on PokeGoldfish. Before the usual signoff I want to ask something of our fans. PokeGoldfish has wanted to expand this series and others to also be able to have a video component to content. That's right, the chance for videos using our Budget Blast decks in action! This would also allow us to more thoroughly test decks before presenting them to you.

Our problem: PokeGoldfish provides all of its content for free so we don't have a budget to grab tons of cards on PTCGO. This is where you come in! We know many fans may have cards, especially Commons and Uncommons, in bulk that they likely may never use on PTCGO. We're looking for fans willing to make trades as a donation to help make these videos possible. If you have spare cards on PTCGO and would like to help make this happen, please contact me, LiteralGrill, directly on Twitter or on Reddit as /u/LiteralGrill. Those who donate will be thanked in every video and of course have my undying gratitude.

With that being said, how did you like this deck? Think we missed some cards that could have made it even better? Let us know in the comments below! Until next time, stay lit trainers!